Mexico, US and the fight against narcotraffic

A new article about Mexico (in Spanish): CNN México reviews a book written by Wilbert Torre whose title is: Narcoleaks:La alianza México-Estados Unidos contra el crimen organizado (Narcoleaks: The alliance between US and Mexico against organized crime).

The author has both interviewed several stakeholders in US an Mexico, and used documents from the State Department released by WikiLeaks to tell the story of several years of cooperation between US and Mexico in order to fight the drug cartels.

The story begins in November 2006 with a meeting between President Felipe Calderon and George Bush, where Calderon states that he wants to struggle corruption and organized crime.

The operation is known as “Iniciativa Mérida” (Merida Operation). Merida is the city in Yucantan where the first negotiations between the two presidents took place.

The operation began with massive extraditions of narcotraffickers. Some of them had trials still going on at that moment.

In US, the author takes the example of Baltimore, stressing that, into the city, the drug traffic is done by American citizens, and not Mexican cartels directly.

In the Mexican side, the president realized that, to be efficient, the number of Federal Police (trained by US) should be much more increased, and this was difficult due to the impossibility to give them sufficient salaries. (if no, they would easily get corrupted by cartels)

At the end of 2009, the US authorities stopped to trust the willingness of Mexican Army to really take risks to eradicate a narcotraffic camp. Finally, the Mexican navy was the one whom operated the attack.

In 2010 some distrust appeared between US authorities and president Calderon.